Even more Evernote…

Following the text analysis by Wordle on President Carter’s inaugural and farewell speeches I decided to run the same two speeches through Tapor – another text analysis tool. Tapor lists the frequency of the words in the text and their distribution throughout the text but strips out frequently used words which do not add much meaning such as and, meanwhile, but etc. This is the so-called ‘Glasgow stop list’ as it was compiled by the Linguistics Department at the University of Glasgow. I only screen-clipped (with Evernote) the top ten words from each speech for comparison and certainly the difference in tone is noticable. In the inaugural speech the words used, like spirit, dream, new and nation, seem more upbeat and idealistic while the top words in the farewell speech  include President, rights, nuclear, difficult which seems more worldly and concrete in tone.

Carter's Inaugural Speech

Carter's Farewell Speech

I found the Tapor text analysis tool very useful. Picking out the frequently used words so quickly and easily from a speech could be really handy for my dissertation as I hope to examine the attitudes as well as actions of the Carter Administration and the US media towards Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. This method could provide a real short-cut for me in doing this.